Little Bugs Seem To Hide Their Light Under A Bushel

It appeared right outside my front window and didn't make a sound. I had had no warning that it was coming or what it wanted.

The light bobbed and weaved in the air, making seeming impossible maneuvers.

A UFO sighting?

No way. This was a decidedly rarer sight.

It was a firefly.

As I was growing up in Indiana and living in the Midwest before coming to Florida in 1973, lightning bugs were commonplace.

But I doubt that I've seen more that a dozen in Florida in the past 26 years. And I've looked.

I don't know whether they are still as common in the Midwest as they used to be. But in the summer, the fields and meadows used to come alive with clouds of the luminescent fliers, their tiny beacons blinking like lights on a Christmas tree.

Lightning bugs, or fireflies, have the distinction of being the only bugs you notice that aren't pests.

Florida seemingly has every other bug in the world. Why not fireflies instead of swarms of love bugs or mosquitoes or midges?

So I called up the University of Florida and talked with entomologist James Lloyd, who teaches a graduate-level course on fireflies.

It turns out that Florida does have fireflies.

In fact, Florida and neighboring Georgia have more species of fireflies - 50 to 60 of the nearly 2,000 species identified - than anywhere else in the country.

You just don't see them.

''The thing is, Florida's fireflies aren't as conspicuous as those in the Midwest,'' Lloyd said.

The lightning bugs in Florida, for the most part, just don't glow as brightly as their Northern counterparts.

''You just have to look for them. They aren't as obvious or as bright as fireflies elsewhere,'' he said.

Technically, fireflies are neither flies nor bugs but a member of the beetle family Lampyridae.

Fireflies live fast and die young, spending most of their lives - anywhere from a few days to several weeks - mating.

Their flashing light attracts the opposite sex, and each species has its own individual light signal code.

The most common color of light produced by fireflies is yellow. But some species emit green or orange light, and one South American species has spots of green along its sides like racing stripes and a brilliant ruby-red light shining from its head.

Fireflies convert chemicals into light with virtually no energy wasted as heat.

Their light organs are essentially a combustion chamber in which oxygen is combined with a small molecule called luciferin, an enzyme called luciferase and a high-energy molecule named adenosine trisphosphate.

The males typically send out their signals while in flight, and the females, perched on leaves or blades of grass, respond.

Although there are lightning bugs in Florida - far more than I realized - their numbers apparently are declining both here and throughout the country.

Several causes are suspected.

Lloyd said one major factor is modern farming practices, which have resulted in lowered water tables and have reduced the amount of marsh and wetlands, a favorite habitat of fireflies.

Pesticides also may be part of the problem.

And light pollution may be a factor.

All that man-made lights in the night sky not only makes it hard for us to see the fireflies, it makes it harder for them to see each other.

Even so, Lloyd said, one of the best places in the world to see fireflies is in the Everglades, where they can be seen year-round.

The Okefenokee Swamp, Osceola National Forest and the Lake City area also are good places for spotting fireflies in Florida, according to Lloyd.

Lloyd has come out with the Fireflyer Companion, a 12-page newsletter devoted to sharing news, information and research about fireflies.

It even has a crossword puzzle devoted to firefly fanatics.

The clue for 45 across, for example: ''gastropod prey of certain fireflies.'' It also has firefly poems, cartoons and trivia.

If you are interested in a copy, write to: Fireflies, Department of Entomology, Bldg. 970, Hull Road, University of Florida, Gainesville, 32611.

In the meantime, keep your eyes on the night sky - and the tall grass.